SSD in Raid 0, as boot disk

[KRSogaard]

I where thinking of playing a bit with SSD's so my plan is to buy 2x250GB Samsung Evo 850 disks and put them in Raid 0 for some speed gain compared to a 500GB Samsung Evo 850.

A friend of mine then told me that it would not be an good idea as there where stuff SSD's did not support in raid, but he did not know if it have changed over the last years.

So a quick question, will 2x250GB SSD's in Raid 0, work well as my boot and data disk? I use a media server for anything else.

[xBlizzDevious]

I where thinking of playing a bit with SSD's so my plan is to buy 2x250GB Samsung Evo 850 disks and put them in Raid 0 for some speed gain compared to a 500GB Samsung Evo 850.

A friend of mine then told me that it would not be an good idea as there where stuff SSD's did not support in raid, but he did not know if it have changed over the last years.

So a quick question, will 2x250GB SSD's in Raid 0, work well as my boot and data disk? I use a media server for anything else.

 

I'm assuming your friend was meaning TRIM - if I remember correctly, Z87, Z97 and X99 all support TRIM through RAID. Don't quote me on that, but I think that's true. Older systems don't support TRIM through RAID - though I used RAID SSDs for a few years without TRIM and never had any major issues.

[ShadowCaptain]

will 2x250GB SSD's in Raid 0, work well as my boot and data disk? 

Yes

[Lord_Karango17]

My laptop comes with 2 m-sata SSDs in raid 0, so I assume trim is supported in raid...

[KRSogaard]

Ok thanks guys.

[Eniqmatic]

As mentioned, it will work. Whether you will actually notice the difference in real life is a different story. Be aware your boot times will probably be slightly longer than a single drive also.

[N1mp]

Don't ever run RAID 0 on your boot drive unless you are a masochist. RAID 0 have a higher failure risk, even if the probability is not very high, it happened to me in the past. Not sure how disk imaging backup software plays with backing up and restoring an image to a RAID 0 array, but if the array fails, you most likely will have to install Windows and all your programs again.

 

Also, you won't notice much difference in your system's speed by going from 1 SSD to RAID 0 SSD. You might bring the boot time to 8 seconds down from 10 (example), but you won't notice much difference on anything else.

 

What I did was to run a single SSD for the boot drive, and then I have 2x SSD in RAID 0 for all the game files. This is where you will get a good performance improvement.

 

Here are some tests I ran: 

 

GTA 5 loading times (from icon click to starting to play the game)

• HDD: 2:00 minutes
• SSD (single - Samsung 840 EVO 500GB): 1:20 minutes
• SSD RAID 0 (2x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB): 1:05 minute

 

 

You can also use the separate RAID 0 array to store your work files (if you do some work with your PC), just remember to backup it up frequently in case of failure of the array (is not if, is when it will fail).

 

The games you can always download them again.

[KRSogaard]

Don't ever run RAID 0 on your boot drive unless you are a masochist. RAID 0 have a higher failure risk, even if the probability is not very high, it happened to me in the past. Not sure how disk imaging backup software plays with backing up and restoring an image to a RAID 0 array, but if the array fails, you most likely will have to install Windows and all your programs again.

 

Also, you won't notice much difference in your system's speed by going from 1 SSD to RAID 0 SSD. You might bring the boot time to 8 seconds down from 10 (example), but you won't notice much difference on anything else.

 

What I did was to run a single SSD for the boot drive, and then I have 2x SSD in RAID 0 for all the game files. This is where you will get a good performance improvement.

 

Here are some tests I ran: 

 

GTA 5 loading times (from icon click to starting to play the game)

• HDD: 2:00 minutes
• SSD (single - Samsung 840 EVO 500GB): 1:20 minutes
• SSD RAID 0 (2x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB): 1:05 minute

 

 

You can also use the separate RAID 0 array to store your work files (if you do some work with your PC), just remember to backup it up frequently in case of failure of the array (is not if, is when it will fail).

 

The games you can always download them again.

 

I am not to afraid of raid failures as everything is work on is ether constant synced with dropbox, or Github.

Would i not gain the same speed gain in games should my operating system also be on the SSD raid?

[N1mp]

I am not to afraid of raid failures as everything is work on is ether constant synced with dropbox, or Github.

Would i not gain the same speed gain in games should my operating system also be on the SSD raid?

 

That's good, I think the Gain vs Risk, at least for me (your mileage may vary) is very high.

 

I use my main PC for work, so if for some reason the RAID array failed (if I used it as a boot drive) on me I would probably have to reinstall Windows and all programs (even if I have all data backed up somewhere else) which would take a few hours to do. So it's really about your personal situation, if you don't mind to spend these hours installing Windows again and if it wouldn't stop you from doing your day job, then it's up to you.

 

Personally for me, I wouldn't do RAID 0 on my boot drive because the benefit is not that noticeable and the risk is a bit high. I think RAID 0 on your boot drive will give you a nice bragging factor (i.e. on my RAID 0 I get read and right speeds of 1000MB/s which is really cool), but that's about it.

 

If you really want it, by all means go for it, but you won't notice much difference. An SSD on the boot drive is already super fast, all my programs open almost instantly, even when I'm loading big projects on Visual Studio.

 

For gaming, video editing, etc, you can always have a separate RAID 0 (like I do) where you will get the speed benefit for those heavy tasks, while you keep the risk of your system failing to a minimum i.e. I have an image backup of my boot drive running every night so if the drive fails, I can just replace it with any other drive (even an HDD) and restore the image and have the system running again in less than 30 minutes.

 

It gets more complicated with a RAID 0 array. I'm not entirely sure, but I think (please people correct me if I'm wrong) that if you create an image of your boot drive installed in a RAID array, you'll only be able to restore it if you rebuild the array with the exact same drive models (this is more of a Windows thing). So if your array fails and for some reason and the drive you used is not on sale anymore (i.e. has been discontinued) then you are stuck with reinstalling everything from scratch.

 

Again, this is my personal preference. Other people might have different opinions, but if you want to be on the safe side and get the best of both worlds go with a SSD (boot) + RAID 0 SSD config.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Don't ever run RAID 0 on your boot drive unless you are a masochist. RAID 0 have a higher failure risk, even if the probability is not very high, it happened to me in the past. Not sure how disk imaging backup software plays with backing up and restoring an image to a RAID 0 array, but if the array fails, you most likely will have to install Windows and all your programs again.

 

Also, you won't notice much difference in your system's speed by going from 1 SSD to RAID 0 SSD. You might bring the boot time to 8 seconds down from 10 (example), but you won't notice much difference on anything else.

Double of "so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about" is still so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about. Just buy quality drives and test them thoroughly before raiding them. Also, SSDs are much less likely to go wrong than HDDs and last longer too, so for the OP's intended setup there's almost zero chance of things going wrong before the entire PC is so outdated that everything gets replaced anyway.

You may not notice a huge difference when going from 1 SSD to a RAID array, but you really do notice the difference when going back from a RAID array to 1 SSD. I have access to a near-identical PC (same motherboard, CPU, overclock, RAM, etc) that uses one SSD, and whenever I use that it just feel slow even on a fresh Windows install.

Suddenly those 2 seconds of boot time and that 0.5 seconds waiting for LibreOffice to open becomes very annoying.

For the record, I run 2 SSDs (850 PRO) in RAID 0 for my OS+games, 2 older SSDs (Vertex 4) in RAID 0 in my NAS for data storage and 4 HDDs in RAID 0 in my NAS for video storage. Never had a single hiccup, and I have backups just in case something does go wrong.

In fact I'm waiting/hoping for one of the HDDs to crap out so I have an excuse to drastically upgrade the NAS, but the darn things just keep going.

If anything, it's better to have your OS in RAID. In the very unlikely event that one of the SSDs fails, you can unplug the culprit and re-install Windows on the other SSD. That way you can limp on until you have a chance to replace the dead SSD.

If you only have one SSD and it dies, you have nothing left and can't use the PC before you replace the dead drive with a new one.

[N1mp]

Double of "so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about" is still so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about. Just buy quality drives and test them thoroughly before raiding them. Also, SSDs are much less likely to go wrong than HDDs and last longer too, so for the OP's intended setup there's almost zero chance of things going wrong before the entire PC is so outdated that everything gets replaced anyway.

You may not notice a huge difference when going from 1 SSD to a RAID array, but you really do notice the difference when going back from a RAID array to 1 SSD. I have access to a near-identical PC (same motherboard, CPU, overclock, RAM, etc) that uses one SSD, and whenever I use that it just feel slow even on a fresh Windows install.

Suddenly those 2 seconds of boot time and that 0.5 seconds waiting for LibreOffice to open becomes very annoying.

For the record, I run 2 SSDs (850 PRO) in RAID 0 for my OS+games, 2 older SSDs (Vertex 4) in RAID 0 in my NAS for data storage and 4 HDDs in RAID 0 in my NAS for video storage. Never had a single hiccup, and I have backups just in case something does go wrong.

In fact I'm waiting/hoping for one of the HDDs to crap out so I have an excuse to drastically upgrade the NAS, but the darn things just keep going.

If anything, it's better to have your OS in RAID. In the very unlikely event that one of the SSDs fails, you can unplug the culprit and re-install Windows on the other SSD. That way you can limp on until you have a chance to replace the dead SSD.

If you only have one SSD and it dies, you have nothing left and can't use the PC before you replace the dead drive with a new one.

 

 

Well, it is unlikely until it happens, and believe me, it does. If you drive, you probably spend years paying for insurance without having any accident, but when you do have one you will be glad to have insurance.

 

It's also very unlikely that your house will catch fire and all your data is burnt to the ground, but it happens, and that's why wise people have an updated off-site backup of their data at all times.

 

Regarding SSDs on your NAS: Again, personally I would never do that unless I was running a 10GB/s network (and even so, I probably wouldn't) to the NAS. If not, it's just a good way of wasting money. A Gigabit network won't be able to max out the speeds of regular HDDs anyway so one wouldn't see any performance gain from using SSDs on a NAS. A Gigabit link has a theoretical limit of 125 MB/s on perfect lab conditions and most HDD drives (recent, 5900 RPM and above) will have a transfer speed between 100 and 180 MB/s (i.e. the HDDs on my server reach 160MB/s). So, the extra speed of SSDs on a NAS is pointless for a Gigabit network.

 

But again, this is ONLY MY point of view. Everyone is free to do as they please and if you want to splash the cash on SSDs for your NAS, then go for it.

 

SSDs also have a shorter lifespan than HDDs and they will most likely fail without any previous warning (HDDs might start making noises when the parts start degrading, but data is still accessible) and they become slower with time.

 

 

Back on topic;

 

"If you are running RAID 0 and one hard drive fails, you can re-install Windows on the other", I think I mentioned a better solution in my post: just create regular images (i.e. my computer does this overnight) of your boot drive. When it fails, just restore de image on another hard drive. You are likely to have a spare drive lying around somewhere, if you don't, then get one (even if it's a cheaper HDD, until you replace it with a new SSD). I do have a spare drive ready to use in case of my main boot drive fails, because uptime on my main PC is important for my job. Restoring my OS image in there will allow me to carry on with my work until the new drive arrives, but if that's too much, you can always walk out of the house and buy a drive at your nearest computer store.

 

When you are running Windows on a RAID array, if you wanted to restore the image of your system, you would have to re-build the RAID array. But if you are running a single drive, there's need to re-install Windows as you can restore the image to any drive (SSD or HDD, of any size). Restoring an image it's a 10-20 minute job versus hours and hours of re-installing Windows again (not to mention that you will have to re-install Windows yet again when you get your new SSD and want to make the boot drive a RAID array again).

 

It's really a difference between: would you rather spend 20 minutes restoring your system, or spending hours re-installing it (twice!)?.

 

And I know that Windows installs really fast these days, specially on a SSD, but installing Windows is the quick and easy part. Installing everything else takes a lot longer. In my case, in order to bring the system to the point I am now, it would take me about 3-4 hours to install all the software and settings I run, so for me it's a no-brainer.

 

 

In any case, if you really want to go for a RAID 0 solution, then by all means, go for it. Try it and see it for yourself. I think the bottom line is just be aware that the chances of the array dying on you are bit higher than having a single drive (this is a fact), even if it's still small, it might happen.

 

If you keep all your important data outside the RAID 0 array and you don't mind re-installing your operating system and all your programs when it fails, then go for it.

 

But again, I would be very surprised if you ever noticed any difference on your boot drive running RAID 0 compared to a single SSD.